My local dealer. He's predominantly a stamp dealer but dabbles in coins. I think he usually picks out all the obvious silver and then sells the rest by the kilo so there's usually something nice in there.
On top of the stuff I kept this was the silver. Nothing too special in there
The other interesting stuff that was a whole lot of Palestine 10 mil coins
and a reasonable collection of pre-1940s Egyptian coins. These coins are reasonably common over here because New Zealand troops trained in Egypt during world war II so most brought back coins with them. I find Egyptian coins from this era all the time in bulk bags
also the two Syrian coins that were slightly lower grade than the one I decided to keep
I was drinking some Grants scotch whiskey. It's not the best but it was free. My mother-in-law brought it back for me after her trip to Australia. She always brings me back something nice from duty free.
I've always wanted to buy a surprise bag but I'm afraid of completely wasting the money on current pennies or something that ten people have picked through.
I buy them in person so I can go in and have a quick fossick through the bag to see if there's anything worthwhile. I spotted some Pacific Islands stuff and the 6 kreuzer coin so I picked it up.
That is a great source of older bulk coins. Impressive lot. Reminds me of when I first got out of school and was in the real world (on my own with a job). My Friday ritual was to go by my local coin shop after work and go through the junk bin. It was quite large and coins were 4 for a $1 or 25 for $5. I always found some silver as he would "bait" it. Usually I would stop at 50 coins as $10 was about all I could afford, but sometimes if I got on a roll finding good stuff would go 15 or 20 dollars worth. My weekend free time was then spent with my Krause catalog, 2x2s, good beer and music. That store closed a few years ago and $10 is no longer a lot of money to me, but those will always be the good ole days.
Quote: "neilithic"3 more for my collection
I got three of these. One was the scarcer 1933 coin but was in a lower grade than this Syrian beauty
Another Middle eastern beauty - Lebanon 1933 paistres
And an upgrade for my South African halfpenny. It looks better in the hand because it was in a flip and my scanner is crap. It's close to XF
Lucky man... the first two are really nice ones that are in my collection as well
For those of you who are asking where he gets these lots... you would need to fly to his little town and visit his coin shop. While your there stop and take a look at his unicorn, he keeps it in his back yard.
Nice haul Neil. Those Syrian coins are beautiful.
Taking a break from swapping for a while, but still interested in pre 1799 Spanish coins, I will make time for that!
My soon-to-be-bride (5.5 weeks!) works for our city's bylaw department, she emailed me and sent a photo of a big bag of foreign coins that were going to be auctioned off. These coins are plugged into meters, transit bus/LRT boxes and the like - minor bits of fraud, really. I was interested of course, but I have talked to the mgr at a local coin store and he bought something like that before, going price was around $500 (I know that's hard to place for value without a weight, but she said it was like the bag for 10 pounds of potatoes..) $500 is too pricey for me, and I know that I was going to get a mess of Philippines, Taiwan, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic and China common and current coins (a big cross-section of our population's home and vacation spots), this isn't what I would want. Show me a big bag of UK and Euro coins though (MY favourite vacation spot), and I'd be all over that... I even considered it for the amount of trader coins I might pick up, but I'm not sure I'm into that kind of gamble yet..